The brass city

 How had he hit on Damascus and then the leap to Spain, through which Abd-ur Rahman had escaped being murdered? For almost three centuries, a branch of the Omayyads, who had been exterminated in Syria, flourished in Cordoba. Along with mosques, the faïences testified to this branch of Arabic civilization, a branch long since withered. And then there were the castles of the Beni Taher in Yemen. A seed fell into the desert sand, managing to yield four harvests.

The fifth Omayyad, an ancestor of Abd-ur Rahman, had dispatched Emir Musa to the brass city. The caravan traveled from Damascus through Cairo and the great desert, into the western lands, and all the way to the coast of Mauritania. The goal was the copper flasks in which King Solomon had jailed rebellious demons. Now and again, the fishermen who cast their nets in the EI-Karkar Sea would haul up one of these flasks in their catches. They were closed with the seal of Solomon; when they were opened, the demon spurted forth as smoke that darkened the sky.

Emirs named Musa also recur subsequently in Granada and other residences of Moorish Spain. This emir, the conqueror of Northwest Africa, may be regarded as their prototype. His Western features are unmistakable; of course, we must bear in mind that the distinctions between races and regions vanish on the peaks. Just as people resemble one another ethically, indeed become almost identical, when approaching perfection, so too spiritually. The distance from the world and from the object increases; curiosity grows and with it the desire to get closer to the ultimate secrets, even amid great danger. This is an Aristotelian trait. One that makes use of arithmetic.

It has not come down to us whether the emir felt any qualms about opening the flasks. From other accounts, we know that his step was risky. For instance, one of the imprisoned demons had sworn to himself that he would make the man who freed him the most powerful of mortals; he had spent hundreds of years thinking about how to make him happy. But then the demon's mood had soured; gall and venom had concentrated in his dungeon. When a fisherman finally opened the flask centuries later, he would have suffered the fate of being ripped to shreds by the demon had he not resorted to a trick. Evil becomes all the more dreadful the longer it is deprived of air.

In any case, Musa, needless to say, could not have recoiled from the unsealing. This is already evidenced by the uncommon boldness of his expedition through the wastelands. The aged Abd-es Samad, who possessed The Book of Hidden Treasures and could read the stars, guided the caravan to the brass city within fourteen months. They rested in deserted castles and amid the graves in decaying cemeteries. At times, they found water in wells that Iskander had dug while trekking westward.

The brass city was likewise dead and was enclosed by a ring wall; it took another two moons for blacksmiths and carpenters to build a ladder all the way to the battlements. Anyone who climbed up was blinded by a spell, so that he clapped his hands, and crying “Thou art beautiful!” plunged down. Twelve of Musa's companions perished, one after another, until at last Abd-es Samad succeeded in resisting the witchcraft by incessantly calling out Allah's name while clambering up and, after he reached the top, reciting the verses of salvation. Under the mirage as under a watery surface, he saw the shattered bodies of his predecessors. Said Musa: “If that's how a rational man acts, what will a madman do?”

The sheik then descended through one of the turrets and, from the inside, opened the gates of the necropolis. However, it was not these adventures - although they have their secret meaning - that prompts the mention of Emir Musa; rather it was his encounter with the historical world, which becomes a phantasm vis-a-vis the reality of the fairy tale.

The emir had the poet Thalib read aloud the inscriptions on the monuments and on the walls of the deserted palaces:

Ah, where are they whose strength has built all these

With unbelievably lofty balconies?

Where are the Persian shahs in castles tall?

They left their land - it did forget them all!

Where are the men who ruled the vast countries,

Sind and Hind, the proud hosts of dynasties?

To whom Sendge and Habesh did bend their will

And Nubia when it was rebellious still?

Await no tiding now from any tomb,

No knowledge is forthcoming from its womb.

The times changed, weaving death from every loom; 

The citadels they built brought naught but doom.

These verses filled Musa with such profound sorrow that life became a burden for him. As they wandered through the rooms, they came to a table carved out of yellow marble or, according to other reports, cast in Chinese steel. There, the following words were notched in Arabic letters:

At this table, a thousand kings have dined whose right eyes were blind and a thousand others whose left eyes were blind: they have all passed on and now they populate the graves and catacombs.

When Thalib read these words aloud to him, everything went dark before Musa's eyes; he shrieked and rent his garment. Then he had the verses and inscriptions copied down.

Eumeswil

By Ernest Jünger